


Guide

by MayCSB



Category: Elementary (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Canned peaches, Gen, Relapse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-26
Updated: 2015-07-26
Packaged: 2018-04-11 07:49:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4427267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MayCSB/pseuds/MayCSB
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A brief account of their life days after Sherlock's relapse. I don't really know, it was just sitting here unpublished and I just thought "why not?".</p>
            </blockquote>





	Guide

It’s a wide, wide expanse of green. There’s nothing for miles on end, no houses, no businesses, no white noise. Their exact location is a mystery, an unmapped bit of land somewhere in the outskirts of a town of nine hundred residents and half a dozen cell towers. The faint hum of a train somewhere far, far away startles her once every half hour, even though she should’ve come to expect it. She can’t tell for sure how long they’ve been there, six, seven, eight days, maybe more, maybe less, she hasn't any clue, the days and nights a jumbled mess of half-sleeping brains, yelps of pain, meals consisting of canned peaches and tortilla chips.

He vomits, cries and shakes in fits and spurs, frenetic, weak limbs jostling from side to side, up and down, sometimes in her arms, sometimes on the dirty mattress on the floor, sometimes elsewhere in the cabin. She holds him, figuratively, literally, and all the space in between consciousness and beyond. She feeds him words of comfort and bits of food, checking for signs he needs more help she can provide, but she knows, she knows he has to do this how he wants to.

She sleeps for minutes at a time, aware of his hot breath on her neck, unwilling and also unwanting to be unaware, for even a moment, of his continued living. She boils infinite kettles, brings him cups of tea he doesn’t hold down, presses hot compresses on his back, splashes him with cold water, grinds endless vitamins and places them with care under his tongue, nourishing his body and her soul.

He’s completely numb, all glassy eyes and limp movements, and yet she doesn’t allow him to stop fighting, she holds him tight as they walk - one hundred metres, sometimes less - around the cabin, props him on a chair near a window, talks to him about the weather, counts down from three hundred, from five hundred, urging him to count with her. She comments on his colouring, she sings campfire songs, critiques books and films she’s seen, names all the bones in the human body.

He’s a cold shell, every breath he takes with her continued assistance a tiny step in the right direction, a raging hallelujah in the form of Joan Watson pumping blood in his veins, oxygen in his lungs, sustenance in his stomach. He thanks god, no god, every god and goddess anyone ever considered true, for her.

She dulls the pain, little by little.

_His relapse is a fucking shitstorm. He goes back to heroin first, naturally, but he doesn’t stop there. After the visit from his father, he experiments with meth, crack, and whatever else he could find for under a $50 and could smoke using a glass pipe. He goes like that for almost three whole days, until she finds him, on a playground in Queens, completely out of his mind, babbling about how his mum was calling him for supper and would not allow him to eat before he washed, about his wife who died in the war, about how big pharma was making america sick, sick, sick. She slaps him with the strength of three mid-sized cars colliding one after the other and drags him - literally drags his body across the playground and into a car and the rest he can’t remember, but it tasted like caramelised onions._

It takes him twelve days to completely regain control of his senses. She’s going through the chorus of “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” in this syrupy voice that doesn’t seem her own, an opened can of peaches in hand, looking out the window. He fishes out a piece of fruit, pops it into his mouth and chews it, for the first time in nearly two weeks, he actually eats something.

She stares for a moment, eyes wide, as he looks out the window.

“I’m sorry.” he says, and sounds damn honest, before extending his hand out for the can.

“Yeah,” she breathes “me too.”


End file.
